WGU Education Degree Path

[nykorn]

I've taught ESL in Asia and am getting my MA in Elementary Education at WGU right now.

- Yes, a degree is worth it. They interview all people with Education degrees first before anyone else, there is usually 0 to 2 candidates like that per job, and they often give them higher pay.

- Some Asian countries like Korea try to require that you had physical in person teaching as part of your certificate or degree in order to get the job or visa. AFAIK China is not like this but it would be good to do the internship just in case anything changes in the future.

- The degree most in demand all around the world is Elementary Education, sometimes called Early Education. For a US license, you can usually test into endorsements (permissions to teach) for practically all other subjects including high school and the Chinese language that you may want without needing to take additional courses, so it isn't usually worth it to get a degree specifically for secondary school. Most people who get jobs with curriculum design do not have a degree in it, they just get it through luck or seniority.

- If you want to land in a specific position, such as Special Ed, Curriculum Design or something else, GET IT IN THE US FIRST. The reason is the US is so strapped for teachers, it is the best time to get into the field because you can currently get hired for a job that normally requires 20 years of experience to qualify for, just because they can't find anyone to do that role.

- With a US teacher's license you can also teach abroad at a US military base or International School like IB school which uses American curriculum. This typically means you get US wages and (if on a military base) US military benefits while still getting a visa to live in that foreign country and still enjoying the low cost living. So you may want to look into other Chinese-speaking countries where you can do that. You should also be able to do some extra work and transfer your license into a Chinese teaching license later on.

- In my case I can finish the equivalent of 1 CU a day. I'm not sure about all degrees, but they structured mine so that the longest courses were first, so after I finished about 30% of the degree I just had a long string of 1 CU courses left plus the student internship courses.

- WGU has told me there is usually no difference in the career field between a BA or MA when it comes to Education jobs, they are of equal weight. They said it is usually senseless to get a BA in Education then go back and get an MA in another Education subject, for example.

- Get a 120 hour TEFL online as well, some jobs want that on top of a degree, this is partially because Asia loves to use recruitment agencies to hire people and the recruiters themselves have NO IDEA about the field of education. Practically no one in Asia cares about the CELTA. Literally I have been interviewed for ESL jobs by people like some girl fresh out of college who didn't understand that you are not normally actually free during the 5 minutes between classes, who was just going down a checklist as to my interview responses, and when my response didn't fit the checklist she would just ask the same question again.

- Take the HSK as well, they will probably want to know your score. As an example, my BA was in Japanese, but Japanese recruiters still wanted me to take the JLPT which is the equivalent of the HSK.

The WGU for teaching licensure is set up like this:
- Take non-Education related courses. I'm in a Master's so I have none of these.
- Take around 20 CU of general Education-related classes common to most Education degrees. You can do this in 1-2 months. Then you qualify to begin the internship.
- Take around 15 CU of major-specific and state-specific classes. This means stuff like "How to teach math to elementary schoolers" and "History of Hawaii".
- Take around 20 CU of internship-specific courses. You must be in an active internship, and it is stuff like "Spend 25 hours interacting with students," "Spend 25 hours planning and implementing lessons".
- After graduating both the internship and all courses, you get your degree plus your teaching license.
- If you want to go teach in another state or foreign country, use all the stuff to apply for a reciprocity license if able.

In order to start the internship process, aside from completing those first 20 CU of general Education credits:
- Get background check, teacher's insurance, WGU ID card, state permission for "preclinical teaching" (this means student teaching internship), take the PRAXIS (state exam basically the same as a GED exam - reading, writing, math). You have to wait for all of the results for this, it will typically take 1-3 months.
- Submit resume and cover letter to WGU in the exact format WGU requires.
- Go to 3 or so WGU webinars regarding student teaching or WGU itself, these are usually only held once a month.
- Then apply for student teaching.
- WGU then takes up to 3 months to find you a local internship place, you can sometimes reach out to schools directly to get it to move faster.

Student teaching is a certain number of hours spread out across consecutive days, which means you can't do a month of internship in June, break for summer vacation, then continue in September. They will make you start in September instead. Internship is FULL TIME and UNPAID. I messed up and started at WGU in March, that means school got out for summer in the middle of my 1st term and it was literally impossible to have done the internship in my first term.

After you get your state teaching license, you need to either be teaching at a registered US school or take continuing education courses every few years in order to keep your license valid. I have no idea what happens if you let it become invalid because you were teaching abroad and not doing continuing education, or how easy it is to reinstate your license. If you are teaching in China and getting paid poor wages (remember - you don't normally get paid in summertime and many companies do a lot of illegal stuff about wages to lower your pay compared to what was promised, I speak from experience), that is something to think about as you may not be able to afford the US continuing education required to keep the license.